Day two in Paris. Seems like the first few days are always about the differences between there and here. A distinct lack of flying insects means no window screens. The typefaces of Roger Excoffon are alive and well and in heavy rotation. French in the mouths of children is infinitely more adorable than English.
I imagine that if the US hadn’t flattened everything and installed escalators everywhere we couldn’t flatten, we might have less of a weight problem. I lost count of the stairs between the airport and my dormitory.
Burning Safari
Oktapodi
La Migration Bigoudenn
Cocotteminute
I’m a huge fan of the short films coming out of Gobelins, a French school for visual arts. Everyone I’ve ever seen from this school looks very tired. It must be a hard program. The work coming out of there is fresh and delightful, though and well executed. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Not from Gobelins, but still French, here’s the trailer for another gem:
Skhizein
Also not from Gobelins, but lovely is Kiwi!
The new Dive web site is live: http://the-dive.net/.
Last Friday, we wrapped two films on the same day. It’s been a heck of a ride, working on The Road and Happy Tears, and while I’m glad to be finished with the long hours, I’m proud of my work and I’m going to miss both shows. We assembled a great team and I’m looking forward to the next project. I also can’t wait to put together some breakdowns so we can show off our work.
I hacked up this script because I was frustrated with rendering in the Nuke UI, tired of typing out command-line render commands, and our renderfarm wasn’t alive yet. I’m posting it because I bet there’s other people in the same situation and I hope it can ease your pain.
This script launches a number of command-line render instances in the background and captures their output in log files which are saved to the same directory as the Nuke script. You are now free to keep working in the UI and have your renders happen in the background. You are also free to to launch 8 command-line Nuksimultaneous renderers and fully saturate your fancy 8-core MacPro.
(more…)
Last night I took an hour to watch Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Impassioned Eye. It’s an interesting documentary about an amazing man.
The most amazing moment was a 15-second shot where Mr. Cartier-Bresson is beginning to sign a new edition of prints. He uncaps his pen, then decides where to make the signature. His hand shifts a little to the right, a little more to the right, now left. We can see that he’s as concerned about the composition of the signature as he is with the composition of his photographs. He shifts again, and then pauses. He starts to write in a confident, unhurried hand and we watch as that signature takes shape. I got goosebumps.
Such a simple thing, a masterwork.
Update: I found the signature clip online. (Web site is in French) It’s not as dramatic as watching the entire doc, but it’s still magic being able to watch his signature take shape.